MOVIE REVIEW: Father-daughter story 'Toni Erdmann' is not for everyone

Friday

Feb 17, 2017 at 6:30 AMFeb 19, 2017 at 10:39 AM

“Toni Erdmann” is a father-daughter story that satirizes the globalization threatening to destroy Europe. If you liked Andy Kaufman's obnoxious alter-ego, Tony Clifton, you're the target audience. If not, stay away.

By Al Alexander/For The Patriot Ledger

Life’s too short; stop and smell the roses. That’s the central premise behind the anointed “Toni Erdmann.” Simple, right? So why does it take a grueling 165 minutes to make the point? And here’s an even bigger query. Why are critics worldwide falling over themselves to heap praise upon a dramedy whose intentions most people will have pegged almost from the start? Beats me. I’ve now sat through it three times, hoping on each occasion to feel its alleged magic wash over me, but it’s just not happening.

I do admire the chutzpah of Maren Ade in writing and directing a movie that’s as freeform as a jazzy jam session, changing directions like the wind. Moments of it are inspired, like an impromptu team-building exercise conducted in the nude and a whacked-out cocktail party at the American embassy in Bucharest, where a stressed-out daughter is both proud and mortified by the antics of her practical-joking father when he lets loose on a gathering of corporate prigs itching to lay off dozens of workers. But these touches of bliss come at the expense of expansive stretches of repetitiveness and staid humor. And they can’t disguise what is essentially a familiar trope about an upwardly mobile woman furiously banging her head on the glass ceiling.

Then there are the instances where you’d swear Ade is taking her heroine’s lofty ambitions to task, insinuating that the woman spends so much time and energy trying to get ahead, she forgets to have fun. Like that’s a crime. Would Ade do the same if the woman were a man? I doubt it. But that’s just an iota of the film’s problems. The most glaring would be Toni Erdmann, the boorish alter-ego of retired music teacher and avid jester Winfried Conradi. Veteran Austrian actor Peter Simonischek has a ball playing the bull in the china shop that is the life of Winfried’s uptight thirty-something daughter, Ines (Sandra Hüller), who can’t seem to get ahead no matter how hard she tries.

She works in Bucharest for a giant consulting company specializing in downsizing. And as the lead rep on a lucrative account she hopes will finally earn her a ticket to her dream job in China, she’s repeatedly foiled by the blatant sexism exhibited by both her client and her bosses. Her love life ain’t much, either, selling herself short by dating a weaselly colleague fond of sex acts involving petit fours. How could her life get any worse? How about an unannounced visit by Winfried, whose own life is in flux in the wake of his recent retirement and the death of his beloved dog? Let the cross-generational, father-daughter fireworks begin, as Dad opens his bag of comical tricks on a decidedly unreceptive Ines. She wants him to leave. He does. Well, at least Winfried departs. Taking his place is the aforementioned Toni Erdmann, who is just Dad outfitted in a horrid mop-top wig and a frightening bucktoothed mouth piece he inserts while pretending to be a life coach for some of Europe’s biggest stars. Everywhere Ines goes, Toni is there, like a demented stalker, sabotaging her every groveling play to please her pompous client – all in hopes of getting Ines to revert to the funny, carefree daughter she was as a child.

There it is. That’s the movie. And it goes on and on and on; which might not have been so bad if Toni were something significantly more than just a blatant rip-off of Andy Kaufman’s obnoxious alter-ego, Tony Clifton, who Ade openly cites as an inspiration for the film. Therein lays the dividing line between those who find “Toni Erdmann” blissful and those who will view it as a chore. It you liked Tony Clifton, you’re the target audience. If not, stay away.

Those who fall into the camp of the former, readily claim “Toni Erdmann” is a hilarious, deeply moving father-daughter story that viciously satirizes the globalization threatening to destroy Europe. But the latter, me included, are merely perplex by all the buzz the film has garnered since debuting to rapturous audiences at last year’s Cannes Film Festival. Now, it’s the frontrunner for the Best Foreign Language Oscar, and soon to be an American-made film starring Jack Nicholson and Kristen Wiig. I wish I could just understand why. Granted, Simonischek and Hüller are terrific, share great chemistry and are utterly believable as father and daughter. But Ade pretty much lays them to waste by having the pair act out the same scene more than a dozen times. Only in the film’s final 10 minutes, when irony raises its bucktoothed head, does the film’s beaten-horse message resonate. In fact it’s so good, it almost makes you forget about the 150 minutes you just wasted. It’s also at that time you realize it wasn’t Ines getting punked by a looney old man, it was us. TONI ERDMANN (R for strong sexual content, graphic nudity, language and brief drug use.) Cast: Peter Simonischek and Sandra Hüller. In German and English with English subtitles. Grade: B-